Methods & Approach

Methods and Approach

This is a transformation. With food. Your body. And your life.

The 5 part Process...

MASTERFUL PRESENCE

I hold a safe, powerful container for your messy, imperfect, whole self. I’m an empath, which means when you share your experience, I walk in it as if it were my own. I do this through active listening, intuition, and always in kindness and curiosity. For many of us, we don’t know how to hold our own story with such care. Instead we are judgmental, impatient, and fatigued. In our work together we always start where you are. Then we move at a pace that works for you, forming inner shifts and new action.

I ask you open ended questions to explore what’s happening in your life, body, mind, and heart. We talk about food and a lot more of what’s under the food. We discuss what you’re feeding yourself at the table and away from the table. Possible topics that are also covered include digestion, blood sugar, hormones, meal ideas, what foods work for your unique body, and other nutritional questions you have. We also name lesser known deficiencies like perfectionism, your inner critic, and mental blocks that hold you back and suck your life force dry.

This might be the first time you really connect the dots on how you eat, why you eat, and what you eat. It might be the first time you meet and feed the parts that bring forth your greatest self-leadership with food and your life. And it might be the first time you know what real nourishment tastes like.

With masterful presence, the best versions of ourselves are birthed and sustained.

INTuitiVE NUTRITION AND EATING

I am a master’s level Nutritionist and Counselor, Certified Intuitive Eating Pro, and Health at Every Size Facilitator. I’m a soothing balm to the overwhelm, second-guessing, and dis-ease many of us face this day and age with food and our body. When I work with you I help simplify and clarify the crazy-making amount of information out there found within our billion dollar diet, health, and wellness industries and show you an entirely different paradigm is possible.

This is not about dieting, following “rules,” or willing yourself into another round of “being good.” You’ve been there, done that, and those strategies inevitable backfire. This is a homecoming. To your body and your understanding of her cues, needs, and wants, and how to take care of her for the rest of your life. No two paths will be the same.

Non-Diet Approach

The irony is the more we try to control food through dieting and rules, the more the food controls us. And for many of us, the more we try to lose weight, the more we gain. We now have studies that back up these trends. This may feel counterintuitive and countercultural. Perhaps you can sense the truth of what I’m sharing here, but can’t quite see the alternative path out. I welcome as many conversations as needed on this, because this is not what we are taught or sold.

By taking a non-diet approach we go after the root. I help you step into a much more powerful paradigm – the long-term work, the life-changing work – like changing your relationship to food, challenging old dieting thoughts that don’t serve you, healing your emotional eating, grounding your anxiety and overdoing, and learning to care for yourself like you never have before.

When we believe we are worth feeling fabulous, that we deserve to fill up on soulful practices that nourish us from head to toe, and embrace self-care rituals that make us glow, we become so satisfied with life, we can’t help but bring that satisfaction everywhere we go. This, I believe, is what moves mountains.

At the beginning of this journey many of want to talk all about the food. I get it. When you say yes to this work and inner shifts do occur, you come to realize food is still just food – it is you who is different.

Embodiment

Never have we had more knowledge about nutrition and never have we been more confused. If it was a matter of finding the right book, diet, or gaining enough information, we’d all be here by now. Even as a masters level nutritionist and counselor I was still emotionally overeating. Why? Because our head won’t figure this out for us, but learning to be in our body will.

Learning to connect more deeply with your body (verses fighting it) may feel like a foreign language at first. There’s uncertainty, mistrust, and even some fear. I guide you every step of the way and bit by bit your body awareness grows. As it does, you see you’re not just reuniting with your body, you’re also building an arsenal of skills, the ones you’ve wanted all along. Your triggers for overeating reveal themselves. Hunger and fullness cues ripen. You’re keen on knowing when you’ve had enough and when it’s time to go back for more. The day comes when you realize you’re that type of eater – the one who forgets about the chocolate in her purse, ice cream in the freezer, and potato chips in the cupboard.

And you feel so dang free.

Meditation and Spirituality

Much of our struggle with food is a symptom of life’s suffering. It doesn’t matter what kind of eater we are or what our current pant size might be, we cannot escape the ungroundedness life brings. This might sound like a total downer to you. Rest assured I’m not a cynic. I’m a realist. As the saying goes, we might not be able to control life’s waves, but we sure can learn to surf.

After all the searching I did on the nutrition path, it was my spiritual practices that moved the needle for me, and I see them as priceless strategies for those I work with, too. How so? Well, our internal frenzies tend to lead to food frenzies and our internal neurosis tends to lead to external neurosis. When we learn to settle our inner environment, we learn to settle our outer environment. In short, as you settle internally, your “food problem” settles, too.

In our work together I guide to towards presence, stillness, and awareness practices that work for you, and by nature result in greater ease, contentment, and focus. I use guided meditations, visualizations, and nervous system grounding exercises. As we practice, you gain a set of coping skills that not only help you feel fed from the inside-out, but have the potential to open up your life in oh so magical ways.

I bring 15 years of yoga and meditation practice to our work, in addition to my studies in Shamanism, Hakomi body-centered psychotherapy, and Ayurvedic Nutrition. I currently study Insight meditation and Buddhism as known by the Thai Forest Tradition under dharma teacher, Heather Sundberg. I sit silent retreats almost every year, lasting between 7-10 days. To paraphrase the many wonderful meditation teachers out there: we don’t meditate to become good meditators. We meditate to awaken our life.

Are you ready to awaken your life?

Feed your very best self, starting now.

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"McKenzie is a miracle worker."

"McKenzie knows firsthand the pain and difficulty of finding your way back to being a person who understands how to feed her own body and soul."